Gunman guilty of killing dancer, 17

A gunman has been found guilty of killing a 17-year-old dancer who was shot in the head at a party.

Annaka Pinto had been dancing at the club event with the all-girl X-Squad group.

But she was struck by a bullet at the end of the night when a row erupted with a disgruntled former member at the Swan nightclub, in Tottenham, north London. Triston Walker, a friend of ex-member Lasticia Manning's sister Simone, fired at the dancefloor as the lights went up.

Walker, 22, of Reed Road, Tottenham, was found guilty at the Old Bailey of the June 2007 murder. He claimed the gun went off accidentally.

Annaka, known to her friends as Rella, was a popular local girl and her death shocked a wide circle of friends. Her father's death soon after her shooting was blamed by family on the stress of her murder.

David Jeremy QC, prosecuting, said: "It was this division between the X-Squad girls on one side, and Walker and Simone and Lasticia on the other, that led to the shooting of Annaka Pinto.

"This was not so much a professional dance troupe as a group of girls who liked to dance and would dance together at informal functions and parties. It appears that, shortly prior to the shooting, Lasticia Manning had fallen out with the rest of the X-Squad girls. Her sister Simone and Simone's boyfriend, Walker, had taken her side in this dispute. The ill-feeling between the two groups built up in the days before the shooting."

While dancing, the X-Squad girls saw Walker showing glimpses of a handgun in his jacket, the court heard. Seconds before the shooting, CCTV showed Walker with a gun in his hand and two people trying to grapple with him.

Mr Jeremy said: "He broke free and headed for the exit. Shortly after that, as he retreated through the doorway, he fired the shot that killed Annaka Pinto."

Walker fled and was arrested in the Cowley area of Oxford a month later. Ricardo Lumsden, 32, of Sheldon Gardens, Edmonton, north London, was convicted of assisting an offender. Simone Manning, 19, also of Reed Road, was cleared of the same charge.